We recently did a fall movie preview, and there was one film that we were most excited about called Synecodoche, New York. At the time, the trailer had not been released, but just based upon the cast which features Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton and Tilda Swinton we were already breathlessly awaiting it. The film is written and directed by Charlie Kaufman who was responsible for writing some of the most wildly imagitive films of the last few years from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Adapation and Being John Malkovich. This is the directorial debut of Kaufman, and it looks like it lives up to his past work.

Here is the official synposis of the film:

Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan’s theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden’s own life veers wildly off the tracks.

For added pleasure here are people trying to pronouce the title of the film, which leads to very comical approaches on the pronounciation of the title: